


Petals Left To Dry (Like Bones In A Grave)

by AlastorGrim



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, BAMF Danny Fenton, Clockwork AKA Resident Dad, Clockwork Is Done With Everyone's Shit, Danny Fenton's Martyr Complex, Emotionally Constipated Vlad Masters, Flower Language, Fuck Phantom Planet, Hanahaki AU, Introspection, Multi, Pining, Trans Danny Fenton, Vlad Is A Stubborn Bastard, adding tags as we go, ghost lore, no beta we die like men, vlad has a fire core
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26272411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/pseuds/AlastorGrim
Summary: When Vlad Masters had first heard of Hanahaki, it had been from his mother."It's what happens when you love someone. When you love someone so much it hurts. When you think you might burst with it, you're so full of love. But they don't love you back."He had thought it was soromantic.What afoolhe'd been.
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Vlad Masters
Comments: 24
Kudos: 150





	1. Vlad Master's Ode To Death

**Author's Note:**

> YO this is my first DP fic, what is up my dudes :3 I positively adore Vlad and thus, I must make him suffer 🖤

When Vlad Masters had first heard of Hanahaki, it had been from his mother. For as long as Vlad could remember she'd coughed up little hot pink petals with wiggly stamens, sometimes in clusters and sometimes in full flowers in different states of bloom. Rhododendrons, she'd told him when he was finally old enough to ask. She'd smiled sadly at him and tucked his hair behind his ear, handkerchief to her mouth as petals and rivulets of blood spilled from her lips, almost too similar for him to tell them apart. 

"It's what happens when you love someone," she had told him. The house had been quiet, dust gathered on the furniture of their billard room even as she sat warily down on one of the armchairs, a glass of wine as red as her lips, her petals ( _her **blood**_ ) dangling from her shaking fingertips. "When you love someone so much it hurts. When you think you might burst with it, you're so full of love. But they don't love you back."

Vlad's brow had furrowed and he had thought of his father, the man who dressed in blue collar clothes and stalked out of the house every morning and didn't return until it was past his bedtime. The only reason Vlad knew he had returned at all was the fact that sometimes (most times) he'd wake up to the sound of glass breaking and someone crying. And Vlad had never been a particularly brave child. Curious, of course, insatiably so. But not enough to push past the pounding of his heart and the sick feeling in his stomach and go searching for an answer he ultimately didn't want. 

(Later, he would be grateful for his own cowardice. It granted him perhaps four more years free of his father's fists crashing into his face and stomach so hard he puked up blood. Four more years of blessed childhood ignorance, when he didn't know what a broken bone scraping underneath blackened bruises felt like. When he couldn't remember what his mother's face looked like, stricken with terror and guilt as she watched him get crushed beneath the weight of his father's disappointment as she knelt shakily on the kitchen floor and heaved up whole bushels of those red, red, _red_ flowers. So lost. So in love. So damned.)

Vlad had been enchanted with the prospect at first. Had poured a bit of himself into the idea that he had the ability to love so deeply, so passionately. He used to stay up reading about it--this disease that erupted from the heart and corrupted the lungs in a way that no scientist could understand. The vague information and theories they had on Hanahaki sent Vlad's mind into a tizzy, questions and answers swirling past faster than he could grab the books to search for them. Why did flowers bloom in the lungs? What determined their genus? How fiercely did one have to love to be chosen to bare those flowers? Vlad had devoured everything he could about Hanahaki. He had thought it was so _romantic_.

What a _fool_ he'd been. 

Vlad learned at the tender age of sixteen what the true purpose of this disease was. As he stood beside his father in his last good suit, watching as his mother's coffin was lowered into the ground, the scent of rhododendrons stuck in his nose and coating his own throat like some last ditch, half-assed effort from those horrid flowers to drag yet another Masters down into the ground with them--he learned. 

Love is weak. Love is _death_. And Vlad had held so much hatred within his chest that day that he had felt invincible. Had known that this, the phantom seeds of adoration, would not be the death of him as it had his mother, because there was no _room_ for it. No room for love in a heart so full of hate.

And, at the time, he had been convinced that there wasn't. 

When Vlad was eighteen, his father's many addictions drove them into the ground. The last of his mother's family funds dried up quickly after she died, and with his father so unwilling to work himself, everything they owned went away, little by little, to pay for it. They had nothing. Gone were the glossy, grand staircases and the sparkling chandeliers and the shelves upon shelves of books that held all the knowledge Vlad could have ever hoped to consume. His mother's manor man sold to a pudgy man that Vlad instantly disliked because of his ridiculous accent and obsession with _cheese_ , and his father would have dragged him down into the slums of alcoholism and gambling with him had Vlad not packed what little he had left and charmed his way into a wayhouse on the opposite side of Wisconsin.

He had applied for college while he had still had the funds to do so, but even when he didn't, he wasn't going to let that stop him. Vlad started at the University of Wisconsin with clothes and toiletries and little else. He smoozed his way into a dorm, clawed his way to the top of every class, and set about making connections and hunting for funds the way his mother taught him. With cunning manipulation and a fair amount of kiss-assery and flirting.

Vlad met Madeline Kemp four months into his freshman year. Contrary to what Vlad might have wanted to believe later, it was not love at first sight. 

He was and is and always _will be_ an overly suspicious man, and Madeline's kindness was... unprecedented. At least, to Vlad it was. Every kindness he had ever received had not been so inexplicable. 

The wayhouse matron had stared at his face and flushed and giggled as he slid his way into her good graces. The vendor who stood on the neighborhood corner and offered him food every time he passed by remembered him from his once generous tips and likely hoped, once Vlad got back on his feet, that he would give them again. His roommate, Jack Fenton, had an IQ of six or seven, perhaps _less_ , and thus was kind out of stupidity. 

(Vlad refused to acknowledge that Jack had floored him too. That Jack had once made him feel just as welcome and safe as Madeline had. That they had once been friends. Because friends don't leave each other for dead. They don't insult each other behind their backs. They don't marry the woman they knew was the cause of the other's affliction. They don't go after their wife right in front of their face. Friends have to _apologize_. Vlad. _**Refused**_.)

Vlad had been suspicious of Madeline and her kindness from the beginning. He had questioned her intelligence at first, because she had first been introduced to him as Jack's friend, but he had quickly put that assumption away. Madeline Kemp stepped into their small club, picked up a white-board marker, and wiped the floor with _both_ of them. She was intelligent and fierce and kind, and Vlad never knew what hit him.

It took three weeks before a tickle started at the back of his throat. Five days more before his chest felt itchy and his throat began to congest. A month before he coughed up his first petal. 

Blue hyacinths. 

Vlad had stared at the ragged flower in his palm and absently recalled his time surrounded by books in a dusty, dwindling parlor as he sought to consume all knowledge on the subject of flora. 

Sincerity. Loyalty. _Constancy._

Myth that spoke of the sun God refusing to let death take his lover, refused to let him wither and die.

Vlad clung to that as he had clung to little else. He would not die. He was not weak, as his mother had been--he was not _foolish_. Not any more. Of course Vlad would not wither and die, of course he would not be dragged down and damned as his mother had been. Loving Madeline did not feel like death. It made him feel _alive_.

(Vlad realized, much later, that if he had deigned to keep reading the lore of Hanahaki maybe he would've found that article upon article had already stated that the flower was not so much indicative of the victim's relationship with the person of desire, but rather how the sickened themselves viewed them. That, Vlad thought wryly, would have saved him the trouble of relief. False hope.)

But, just because he had love in his heart didn't mean that the ocean of _hate_ he carried went away. Vlad still hated, and he hated with the same passion he loved with. He hated his father, hated his mother, hated the matron, hated every single damn Professor that looked down their nose at him because his sweaters had holes but his grades were airtight and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it outside of snide comments--Vlad _hated_ and he hated _fiercely._

But he found that he loved, as well. He loved his mother. ~~He loved Jack~~. He loved Madeline. And Vlad felt as relieved at the sight of those flowers almost as much as he felt terrified. 

Vlad quickly found that when left unattended, his love...soured. 

He grew resentful towards Harriet and Michael and Jack for taking Madeline's attention away from him, then grew angry with Jack for beginning to distance himself from Vlad as he grew closer to Madeline like _Vlad_ should have been. But he saw the look of puppy love in Jack's eyes and yet that oaf wasn't the one choking on flora and it just wasn't _fair_ \--

By the time the accident happened in their sophomore year, Vlad hated each of them almost as much as he loved them.

Then he got a face full of ectoplasmic energy.

He spent fourteen months in the hospital, unable to do much more than drift in and out of painful conciousness--before he died. 

Vlad Masters dimmed and faded like a smoking ember in a doused fire pit. And when obsession, rage-- _love_ \--forced him alight again he was nothing more than an inferno. 

_Vlad Plasmius_. 

When he vomited up flowers again, years later, he was too blinded by everything else to notice.

His hyacinths had turned yellow.

•✴️•

Vlad straightened his cufflinks as he stepped down from the mayor's podium and swept back into the building with a sigh. Another one of Daniel's messes cleaned up, another swell of popularity for Vlad. Still, it was tedious following up with contractors every time Daniel got thrown into a building. Or two. 

Even if Vlad was the one doing the throwing.

Daniel had been acting rather peculiar, these days. Vlad caught him several times visiting the Time Ghost with increasing frequency, and while Vlad could tell they still spoke, Daniel had taken to avoiding Danielle more often than not. Not to mention a few months ago when he had shown up on Vlad's doorstep the night of the Truce completely smashed, handed him a sloppily wrapped box, and proceeded to pass out on his couch.

Vlad's curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he had unwrapped the 'gift' to find a pair of blue oven mitts inside, decorated with a decal pattern of rainbow fruit loops.

He had barely managed to restrain himself from strangling the boy then and there, but the fact that the Truce was still technically in place had been just enough to stay his hands. Vlad had decided to wait until the morning to murder the insolent brat, but by the time he'd woken, Daniel had already fled. Smart boy.

Vlad shook his head as he stepped into his office and pulled down a rocks glass, a bottle of whiskey, and a pack of pens. He couldn't keep hold of them these days, having to resort to cheap plastic pens because he kept _melting_ all his good ones when he got too irritated at the idiocracy of small town folk. He brushed past the vase of pale hyacinths on his desk, placed delicately beside his portrait of himself and the Fenton clan, and ripped open the pens with his teeth as he set his glass down. Pouring himself two fingers of whiskey, he sat down before his mountain of contractor paperwork and raised the glass to his lips. 

Pausing when he felt the familiar sensation of petals in his throat, Vlad put his glass down with another heaving sigh and pushed himself away from his desk so as to avoid getting ectoplasm all over important documents. It wouldn't be the first time, but he knew from experience that it was an absolute bitch to clean. 

Vlad grabbed the crystal bowl sitting on his window sill and curled over it, grimacing at the bitter taste of plant matter on his tongue as he heaved up a cluster of petals. The fits had slowed down a bit in recent years, and even more so in the past few months, so when his chest spasmed and he choked _again_ , Vlad felt vaguely alarmed. And then it happened again. And again. 

By the time Vlad's chest stopped trying to strangle him, he had a verifiable bushel of blooms in the bowl. His eyes fluttered open, watery from the assault on his lungs, and he froze. 

Those were not the soft, buttery yellow petals he was used to seeing. They weren't even the sky blue of his original hyacinths. They weren't hyacinths at all. 

These petals were a deep purple, almost black, and a few even sat, blackened and dead, amongst the others.

Gladiolus.

 _Sword lilies._

The vase of hyacinths burst into flames.


	2. Poking Your Nose Where It Doesn't Belong

"It's weird, right?"

"Oh definitely."

"I dunno, Danny, shouldn't you be glad he's been quiet?" Sam said dubiously from where she sat across from him, not even looking at him as she slammed his avatar into oblivion on screen.

Danny cursed and slung his controller down as Tucker snickered next to him. "Yes? But I mean--it's _Vlad_."

"He _is_ an evil bastard," Tucker mused as he took his turn in getting destroyed by Sam, his little blue avatar pitiful looking next to Sam's hulking black one. "So it's possible he might be planning something. But, honestly, I can't remember the last time he did anything other than punch you into the ground or make fun of your dad. Also while punching you into the ground."

"Gee, thanks, Tuck," Danny deadpanned. He slumped back in his bean bag chair and groaned. "I just don't want another Fright Knight on my hands. Whenever Vlad goes static it usually means he's off unleashing some ancient ghost monster or trying to kill Clockwork again."

"Clocky can handle himself," Tucker pointed out, glancing at him and getting shot for his trouble. He jumped and swore. "Fuck, Sam, show some decorum!"

"Eat my decorum."

Danny snorted, grinning. "There's an idea. Maybe I should just go knock on Vlad's door so I can slap him with a glove and challenge him to a duel."

Tucker laughed, costing him yet another hit and letting Sam crush him into nonexistence. "He'd probably enjoy that."

Sam rolled her eyes and put her controller down to stretch an arm lazily above her head. They'd only been down here for an hour and already she'd murdered each of them twelve times. "Or he'll just be pissed you're sticking your nose in his business and 'duel' will become 'murder Danny without actually murdering him'. Though he _does_ seem to enjoy kicking your ass, so it's fifty fifty."

Throwing his hands up, Danny lurched backwards in his seat and almost tipped over. "You say that like I'm always getting my ass kicked! I beat Vlad all the time!"

Tucker and Sam leveled him with matching incredulous eyebrow raises. 

"Yeah, sure, but you had the battle mech--"

"Or Clockwork's help--

"Or your dad's--"

"Or Valerie's--"

"Or--"

"OKAY," Danny said loudly, a flush dusting his cheeks as he ran a hand over his face. "I get it, I'm a terrible fighter! Though, to be fair, the only training I really get is the weekly Skulker fight, and Skulker is small fry compared to Plasmius. Which is why I'm more than a little worried about the radio silence."

Tucker sucked on his teeth and leaned his head back to look at Danny, a mischievous grin curling his lips. "Sooo...spy time?"

Sam blinked, raising an eyebrow as Danny smiled sharply back. "What, right now?"

Rolling onto his feet, Danny rolled his shoulders and changed into his ghost form. He hopped up off the ground and floated in between Sam and Tucker. "Yeah. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of watching Chaos slam my poor boy into the dirt."

Sam smirked. "You guys are just sore losers. Grow a pair."

"I'm _trying_!" Danny whined as he hooked his friends by the biceps. He grinned when Sam snickered and Tucker groaned in exasperation.

"Dude, seriously, get some new material. You've pulled that one like six times already!"

Danny shrugged and turned them intangible before flying up through the ceiling of Sam's basement. "Ah, I can't help myself! You're just mad that I'm a comedy genius."

Tucker snorted once they were outside, and Sam rolled her eyes. Danny hefted them more firmly into his grip and curved off towards Tucker's house so they could grab his (rather impressive) array of spy equipment. Sam flushed, but Tucker merely grunted at the switch, huffing out a wheezey breath. "I hate it when you do this."

"Aw, c'mon, flying is fun!" Sam protested, closing her eyes as the wind whipped her hair about her face.

"Not when I can't control where I'm going," Tucker grumbled. "I have no say of whether I'm going left or right or up or down--"

"What's that?" Danny said loudly. "You want to go down?"

Tucker's eyes widened and Sam's snapped open. "Danny, don't--!"

"Tucker, what have you done--!"

They both dissolved into screams as Danny grinned impishly and immediately took a nosedive towards the pavement below them, cackling as they shrieked like banshees in his ears. He turned them intangible before they hit the ground, sinking below the road and bobbing easily back up with a hum of glee.

"I FUCKING HATE YOU," Tucker bellowed as soon as they resurfaced, face undecided on whether it wanted to flush or blanch. Sam was too busy clinging to his ribcage like a spooked cat to say much of anything. 

Danny laughed and spiralled back up towards the rooftops, aiming for Tucker's once more. "Aw I love you guys too."

A few minutes later (and a whalloping from Sam, once she'd regained her ability to move) he was watching as Tucker rifled through and discarded several contraptions that Danny vaguely understood the purposes of, all while tossing plenty more into the black bookbag Sam was holding. They clacked and grinded together when she went to zip it closed, causing a litany of screeches and protests from Tucker about her mishandling his babies. Other than that, they were in and out of Tucker's room without a hitch. Only, this time, both Tucker and Sam insisted on taking the low roads instead of flying.

Danny figured he deserved that. 

"So where would he be this time of day?" Sam questioned through the Fenton-phones as he soared above them. "He's the Mayor still, right?"

"How do you _forget_ it? He's always making stupid laws that shove us teens and the like under the bus," Tucker complained over the roar of their scooters, having not grabbed a pair of headphones for himself.

"Seriously," Danny grumbled as he banked towards City Hall. "My dad never lets me forget it, no matter how much I want to. Election day is always a spectacle at my house--dad is still Vlad's biggest supporter." He rolled his eyes at the notion, exasperated but too used to it to really complain. Then, turning his attention back to Sam's question, he hummed. "City Hall would be our best bet for now, yeah. Even if he's not around, I can always phase in and plant a bug or two in his office. Win win."

"Isn't planting spy equipment Plasmius's thing?" Sam muttered dubiously. 

Danny shrugged, even though he knew she was focused on the road and wouldn't see him. "Hey, payback's payback, right?"

Tucker nodded sagely, hollering, "He's got a point!"

Rolling her eyes, Sam huffed. She revved her scooter and put on a burst of speed to keep up with Danny, Tucker content to idle behind her. She glanced up at him then, cautious. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, Danny. Be careful."

"I am careful," Danny responded in offense. "I'm super careful! I'm practically the poster boy for caution and thinking things through. In fact, Miss Manson, I am INSULTED that you would imply otherwise." Somehow, in his mocking spiel, he had devolved from simple teasing into a (rather good, if he said so himself--which he did) impression of Mr. Lancer.

"Pride and Prejudice, children!" Tucker suddenly boomed, much to Danny's amusement and Sam's exasperation. "What in _Shakespeare's_ name is so important that you must yell across my classroom?"

Danny dissolved into cackles as Sam tried her best not to grin. " _Guys_. This is serious."

Tucker nearly ran into a parking meter and had to swerve to avoid it, then stuck his nose in the air as best he could while still keeping an eye on the road around him. "Of course it's serious! How dare you insist that the retelling of..." Tucker trailed off, obviously at a loss for another book title.

"Ooh, do Macbeth!" Danny offered gleefully from above, ducking down a little lower so Tucker could hear him better.

"The retelling of Macbeth is very serious, Miss Manson!" Tucker roared dutifully, grinning through his facade.

Sam sighed, a smothered quirk to her lips. "At least it wasn't Moby Dick."

Danny glanced at Tucker, whose stunt had made him veer into Sam's lane a bit and now was hastening to correct. "I mean--"

"DON'T," Sam shouted back, whipping a warning finger up at him without looking at him. "So help me I will turn this scooter around, Danny Phantom!" Danny grinned innocently. She huffed. "Shouldn't you be focused on working out Plasmius instead of making dick jokes? You're the one being all paranoid."

That-- _that_ was uncalled for, coming from Samantha "Anything Normal Is Clearly Evil" Manson, but Danny merely made a noncomittal noise and rose back up out of hearing range. The rest of the trip to City Hall was fairly quiet. 

Truth was, Danny had actually been putting this off. He had noticed Vlad acting weird weeks ago, but he hadn't wanted to address it because one, it was _Vlad_ , and two, Danny had been trying to outline permanent truce papers for the two of them for the last five months. Getting into a big fight would not only end with him, as Tucker so elegantly put it, punched into the concrete, but it would also push Danny's plans back by a fair amount of time. Time he didn't want to waste. He had learned from Clockwork that time was a very, very valuable thing, and it needed to be handled with care. Not only in the past or the future, but the present. Especially the present, even. Clockwork was always admant on the present being far more important than the past.

The thing was--Danny was tired.

It had been three years since he'd first wandered into his parents' ghost portal and staggered out half-dead, and in that time Danny had come to learn a lot about a lot of things he previously hadn't even thought of in passing. And he still had so much to learn. 

His previous enemies had gotten slowly less challenging as he'd grown into his powers and trained himself to use them correctly. Valerie had learned about his identity not long after they had saved Dani together, and (after a rather long screaming match in which she'd pulled six different guns on him) she was now on Team Phantom. Wulf and Walker had recently formed an alliance during a rebellion of the prison guards and had yet to dissolve it, meaning Wulf was keeping Danny in the clear with Walker and all of his prison's inhabitants. Desiree had mellowed out a lot in recent years after finding another lover who could grant _her_ wishes, and hadn't ventured anywhere near the mortal realm in over a year now. Nocturne and Undergrowth were bigger threats, but when he took them out they tended to stay down for longer, so he was only fighting them two times a year, tops. 

Of course, Johnny and Kitty would probably never leave him alone, but between them and Skulker, they were more like weekly sparring matches to keep him on his toes. Occasionally Ember or Technus would join in, but not nearly so much as they used to. Technus had taken a liking to Tucker and was normally content to discuss tech and the like with him when he got the chance, and Ember had discovered that Danny could play the guitar and her respect for him had doubled instantly when she realized that his playing wasn't half bad. 

The only real and true threat he faced these days was Plasmius. Vlad Masters. The only other halfa in the entire world. 

Well.

That wasn't entirely true.

Dani herself was a halfa, though lately Danny had begun to feel...weird, about being around her. He knew, on a basic level, that she was his clone and thus a verifiable exact copy of him. But therein lied the problem, didn't it? Because she _wasn't_ an exact copy of him. At least, she didn't feel like him, most of the time. Her personality had been just different enough that he saw her as a completely different person. Most of the time. The times that he didn't...

Well.

Danny shook his head to clear those thoughts from it, annoyed at himself. No. Not thinking about that right now. 

So, he and Plasmius were _essentially_ the only two halfas in the world. If you didn't count Dani. Or--

' _Nope. Not him. We don't think about him either. Change the fucking subject NOW--_ '

So. Plasmius. Five-months-in-the-making truce. The _point_. Which was that Danny didn't want to fight Plasmius anymore. 

Not because of any sort of imbalance of power (thanks Tucker), but because he just--he didn't _want_ to anymore. Fighting Vlad used to be scary, because they were so far apart in experience. And then it had been almost _fun_ for a while, because the fight had evened out a bit and it had made his stomach lurch and tingle like the drop on a rollercoaster. The suspense of not knowing when the next hit would come coupled with the security of knowing he could take it and stay standing bolstered him until he had a cocktail of euphoria and adrenaline egging him on for the next punch. 

But for the past year, fighting Plasmius felt...off. Danny wasn't sure what had changed--just because he'd gotten better definitely didn't make him more powerful than Vlad, as loathe as he was to admit it--but the high of it had soured like a bad trip. He almost felt _sick_ whenever they fought. 

The sick feeling always led to Danny having to ponder things he didn't like to ponder in the aftermath. He'd sit there and think over the years he and Plasmius had been fighting while he patched himself up, wondering if they'd do this forever and what Vlad hoped to gain from it all. He had backed off with the whole 'kill Jack' thing, if only because he had finally realized that murder wasn't exactly conducive for romance. Or that's what Danny assumed happened. Vlad could have just decided that it would be far more satisfying to leave Jack alive and make him watch and suffer as Vlad stole his wife from him. That seemed more like something Vlad would do. But then, he had also backed off Danny's mother too, which was something Danny didn't understand. 

No, it seemed that these days, his sole focus was Danny. Which, while confusing, suited Danny just fine. It kept his family and friends out of danger and freed him up to keep his attention solely on beating Vlad. 

Danny was yanked out of his thoughts by Tucker calling, "I don't see his car! Ready to do some B&E, Danny?"

"Yeah," he called back, swooping back down towards them as they turned into the parking lot of City Hall. "What do you think, Tuck? Just a bug or should we plant some cameras too?"

"Hmm, I'm thinking both. Can't be too careful, right?"

"Except the more junk you have in his office, the more likely it is that he'll find it," Sam argues irritably.

"It's not like he can trace it back to us though," Tucker pointed out. "Even if he does find it, at least our stuff doesn't have a bright green 'Property of Fenton Works' on it."

"And it's not shaped like any of our faces, unlike Plasmius's bugs," Danny pointed out cheerfully, getting another eye roll from Sam. 

"Yeah, okay, that's valid. But still, don't over do it. You won't be getting any answers if he catches you out first thing." She parked next to Tucker near the back of the parking lot under one of the trees clustered there. Sam clicked off the Fenton-phones once Danny got close so they wouldn't get feedback, smoothing her hair behind her ears. 

Danny took the handful of bugs and tiny cameras from Tucker and gave Sam a solemn salute. "Ma'am yes ma'am!"

Sam gave him a deadpan look. "Go on, you idiot, before Masters comes back and we get caught."

Smirking, Danny took off towards the top floor of City Hall, phasing through the wall and into Vlad's office. He took a moment to look around, and blinked. The lights weren't on, but it was just past noon so there was plenty of light coming in through the windows. The sight they shone upon wasn't a pretty one. 

Vlad's office looked like it had gone a round or two with Vortex. Bookshelves had been torn down and thrown across the room, scattering battered tomes all over the floor amongst heaps of shattered glass. There was a big scorch mark on Vlad's desk, which looked like it had lost a fight with an angry bear, deep gouges slashed into the dark lacquer of the desktop. Catching sight of several more scorch marks on the carpet, Danny felt a slow, unsettling realization creep over him. 

"Vlad did this," he whispered, a bit stunned. He floated over to the mutilated desk and swept a hand across it, shards of glass tinkling with the movement as he moved the shredded papers and ash aside. Beneath it all, there was a very familiar photo with a broken frame, dusted with what looked like charred leaves. Danny picked some up and watched them crumble into ash through his gloves. "Why would he do this? Why would Vlad wreck his own stuff?"

It looked like the office had been this way for a while. How long, exactly, Danny didn't know. What he _did_ know, was that he couldn't plant anything in a mess like this, especially since he didn't know when or if Vlad was going to have it cleaned. But still, he didn't want the trip to have been a total waste, so he stuck one of the mini cams in a corner of the ceiling near the window, and phased through the door to plant both a bug and a cam on the archway leading up to Vlad's office so they would know when it was safe to come back and retrieve their tech.

Pursing his lips, Danny pocketed the rest of the spyware and drifted slowly out of the building, mind buzzing furiously as he flew back towards Sam and Tucker. 

"I was right," he declared as soon as he was in hearing range, turning visible once more and making both of them start at his sudden appearance. They had moved to sit on the old, moldy bench set up beneath the tree they'd parked under, and when they jolted it gave a warning squeal. "Something's definitely up. Vlad's office is completely trashed, and it doesn't look like he's been here in days." He dumped the rest of the gadgets back into the backpack they'd used to carry them, much to Tucker's dismay.

"Could he have gotten caught up in another fight?" Sam asked, her brow furrowed. "It's not like you're the only one with enemies in the Ghost Zone. Maybe a deal with one of those 'ancient evil ghost monsters' went bad." 

"Isn't that a good thing? Keeps him off our back for a while and now we know he's not planning anything!" Tucker chirped.

Danny just shook his head, lips pursed, perturbed. "No, something about this doesn't feel right. Something's...wrong."

Sam's brow furrowed, and she ventured, "Should we ask one of your ghost friends? Clockwork? Frostbite?"

Huffing, Danny shook his head again. "Not this time. Not--not yet, anyway. I don't like going to them for every little thing, even if it's Vlad. We'll get answers by ourselves. We can figure this out on our own."

"No cheat codes," Tucker reaffirmed with a small grin that Danny weakly returned. 

"No cheat codes."

_Not this time._


	3. On The Fritz

Danny managed put the state of Vlad's office and the fate of Vlad himself out of his mind for another week. It was fairly easy too, because his mind was largely preoccupied by other things. Namely, school and his upcoming exams, not to mention a new ghost that had popped up from Ember's crowd that called himself Shredder. 

"Give it up, dude!" Shredder shrieked in horrible screamo as he tried to blast Danny with shitty riffs from Ember's stolen guitar. "My music is too fire!"

"Yeah, a _dumpster_ fire!" Danny swooped easily out of the way and blasted Shredder back with one hand, annoyed. "Can't you just go back to your mom's basement and we'll call it a day? I'll even put in a good word with my sponsor."

Shredder paused at that, perking. "Really?"

"No."

Danny fired off another blast, and this one hit Shredder directly in the chest. Instead of just sending him backwards, like it did most ghosts, Shredder careened backward like a rocket and slammed into the sidewalk several yards away, hitting it so hard he made a crater. Startled, Danny looked at his glowing hand with bewilderment. He hadn't meant to do that. Hell, he hadn't even been trying!

Shredder groaned and drew Danny's attention back to him. He winced when he saw the familiar purple and blue of Ember's guitar, smashed to pieces. She was going to kill him for that.

Shaking his head, Danny slipped the thermos out of his belt and wasted no time in sucking Shredder up in it. He clapped the cap back on, tucked the thermos back into its hook, and immediately spun and fled before anymore spectators (or spectors, ha) could arrive to see the damage he'd done. Danny looked down at his gloved hand and frowned. It was probably a fluke, but he'd have to be a little more conscious about his powers from now on just in case.

"Maybe I could go see Frostbite about it if it gets bad. For all I know I'm developing a second core or something else stupid." Danny rolled his eyes.

"Danny!" a familiar voice called from below him. He blinked and looked down to see Valerie waving at him from across the way, jet sled swerving in his direction. She clicked her helmet off and glared as she got closer. "Heard you got into another fight this morning. And you didn't call me? Rude."

"It was only Skulker!" Danny retorted in affront. "He didn't even have any new weapons or anything. If I'd have called you, you'd have yelled at me for wasting your time. Really, you should be thanking me--at least _you_ made it to school on time!" He crossed his arms and gave her a faux scowl. They both knew he wasn't really cross with her, just as she wasn't actually angry with him.

Valerie snorted. "Okay, I see your point." She unhooked her heels from her sled to sit down on it, legs dangling off the side. She gestured lazily back towards the street he'd come from, sirens ringing faintly through the air. "Still, you're getting sloppy, Phantom. Normally you're more careful."

Danny rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled awkwardly. "Sorry? Had a little mishap--overshot. It won't happen again. Probably."

Shaking her head, Valerie scrubbed a hand over he face to hide her smile. "Whatever! Just watch where you're pointing those guns, huh?" She glanced at him with a smirk. "You're running a little too hot these days."

Danny gasped, flourishing a hand to his chest in dramatic offense. "Why, Miss Gray! If I didn't know any better I'd say you were _flirting_ ," he crooned, batting his eye lashes at her. He grinned when she snickered and stood once more.

"Get back to work, you menace. Don't you have a ghost to flush?" She snarked as she planted her feet back into the jet anchors. Her curls, which had been whipping wildly around with wind, disappeared beneath her helmet once more. "And Danny? Make sure to visit sometime soon. She misses you."

Danny's smile froze on his face. He gave a jerky wave and nodded. "Sure thing!"

Valerie flew off towards her house, and Danny let his forced smile drop as soon as she was out of sight. A frustrated sigh escaped his lips, and he shook his head. 

This was ridiculous. Dani didn't deserve to deal with all of Danny's issues, but she also didn't deserve to be ghosted either. Pun not intended. Danny snorted to himself and turned back towards Fenton Works, flying off toward the OP center so he could sneak in and deposit Shredder in the Ghost Zone before sneaking back upstairs to make it seem like he'd never left. Which, to his parents, he hadn't. Danny Fenton has spent the last two hours doing his homework, according to all who didn't know of his alter ego.

And really, Danny thought as he phased through the floor of the OP center and snuck his way down to the lab, anyone that really believed that he would willingly spend _two hours_ doing _homework_ clearly didn't know him very well. 

A pang shot through his chest.

Danny swallowed. Which wasn't...entirely his parents' fault. Maybe if he told them, maybe if he hadn't lied, hadn't _kept_ lying...

Well. It didn't bare dwelling on. Because ever since Danny died three years ago? All he'd done was lie.

Danny floated back up to his room, mood effectively ruined, and flopped onto his bed. He changed back to Fenton and groaned half-heartedly into the bedcovers. Frowning when he felt his pocket start to vibrate, Danny blindly pawed for his phone and held it to his ear. "'Lo?"

" _Danny! Masters came back into work this morning--we've got footage to look over,_ " Tucker said excitedly, voice high and tinny from the speaker. 

Danny winced and held the phone a little ways away from his ear. He sat up. "I'll ask my parents if I can spend the night at your place. Have you talked to Sam yet?"

" _Yeah, she's already over here._ "

There was a shuffle of fabric, and then Sam's voice. " _Sup? You want us to wait for you to go over it?_ "

"Yeah, don't start without me," Danny replied as he stood and grabbed his jacket from the floor. "I'll be there in ten. Just gotta let mom know I'm spending the night."

" _Are you, though?_ "

"Hopefully? Yes. But if there's even the slightest hint of something off, I'm gonna have to do some more prying on my own. Normally I wouldn't leave you guys out; I just have a--"

" _Bad feeling,_ " Sam chorused with him, sounding less fondly exasperated and more annoyed this time. " _Yeah, yeah, we get it. Just get your butt over here so we can spy on your arch enemy already._ "

"I resent that," Danny said weakly before she hung up on him.

•🥀•

"What've we got?"

"Not much," Tucker admitted, turning to watch Danny phase the rest of the way into his room. He brought up a grain screen with half an eye before continuing. "A brief bit from this morning, but it looks like he wasn't there long."

Danny's lips pursed, floating closer to the computer to get a better look, Sam appearing on his other side to crowd around Tucker's chair. "Let's see it then."

"Roger," Tucker murmured as he spun in his chair and hit play. 

Danny and Sam leaned forward, smushing Tucker between them until he squirmed. He quickly resigned himself to his fate as filler of the friend sandwich and turned his attention back to the footage as well. 

_"No, thank you, Alyssa, I can handle it myself._

_"Are you sure, Mayor Masters?"_

_"Of course, my dear. If you'd wait for me in the foyer?"_

The audio was faint, but there, and Danny could see Vlad walking down the hall from the cam he'd placed on the doorframe. He was alone, so he must've convinced his secretary to leave him be. There were no contractors with him either. Danny's eyes narrowed. 

If Vlad wasn't coming back to clean up his trashed office--after a _week_ , no less--then what was he coming back for?

Tucker helpfully switched cam views as Vlad entered his office, stepping easily into the wreckage and shutting the door carefully behind himself. Then he stopped for a moment, head bowed and eyes shut. It was hard to make out his expression from the cam view, and Danny couldn't tell exactly what was going through Vlad's mind then. Was he regretting his tantrum? Angry at himself for not just having it cleaned to avoid further suspicion? Or was he just tired with the tediousness of it all?

(Danny certainly was).

His mouth moved--he was talking to himself. Danny cursed softly when he realized that he hadn't put a mic in the office, just the cam. Tucker, however, was quick on the uptake as always. 

"Here, hold on. I can enhance the audio from the one outside and we might be able to hear what he's saying."

"Who is he talking to, though?" Sam narrowed her eyes at the screen, confused. "A ghost?"

"I think he's talking to himself," Danny murmured absently. There were no hitches in the background or glitches in the recording that suggested another ghost was in the room. "Crazy fruitloop."

Tucker worked for a moment, then rewinded the clip a bit. He pressed play, and all three of them leaned in to hear past the static.

 _"Of course,"_ Vlad muttered roughly as he finally looked out at the wreck he'd made, then seemed to convulse, a hand flying to his mouth as he doubled over.

"Is he gonna hurl?" Sam asked shrilly as she scrunched up her nose, turning away and clapping a hand over her eyes.

Danny held a hand out and caught her by the shoulder. "No, wait, look!"

"Danny I love you but I'm not going to watch Masters puke for you--"

"No, Sam--just _look_!" Danny demanded, pointing at the screen. Sam remained stubbornly turned around, but Tucker squinted at the screen. Then he sucked in a breath, leaning back as he glimpsed what Danny was sure he'd seen.

"I'm...pretty sure those are petals."

Sam whirled around at once, intrigued and incredulous. "What?"

Danny tipped his head, brow furrowed as he watched Vlad heave up a bushel of flowers into the palm of his hand. "I've seen Vlad do that a couple of times--he's had Hanahaki since I met him. It's just...it was never that bad, before. Nothing like _that_."

Tucker paused the video and frowned. "If he's had it since you met him, shouldn't he be dead by now? I mean, especially if it's because of your mom. He said he's been in love with her since their college days."

Pursing her lips, Sam eyed the frozen picture of Vlad warily. "That's," she began slowly. "A _really_ long time for someone to have Hanahaki."

_And not die from it._

Danny swallowed. "I mean, he is half ghost. Maybe it takes longer to kill someone if they're already half dead?"

"But twenty years?" Tucker asked incredulously.

"Danny, this could tie back in to what I was talking about the other day." Sam bit her lip. "Like you said, you guys are half ghosts. What if, because you're already dead, you can't--"

"Can we not, Sam?" Danny said sharply, hand tightening on the back of Tucker's swivel chair. He blinked when Tucker yelped and cringed away from the seat.

A flare of ice had spiked out from beneath his fingers.

Tucker looked at it, then up to Danny in affront. "Dude!"

"Sorry!" Danny yelped, tearing his hand away and backing up a bit. He shook out his hands and folded them behind his back, eyes turning back to the screen to avoid the uncertain looks Tucker and Sam were throwing at him. He blinked. "Wait--those flowers aren't yellow."

Tucker whipped back around to look, and Sam reluctantly ventured closer as well. She frowned and glanced at him. "So? What, are his flowers supposed to be yellow?"

"Yeah, actually," Tucker said thoughtfully before Danny could answer. He zoomed in on the handful of blooms, brow furrowed. "You don't remember that time we broke into his house?"

"Which time?"

"He had yellow hyacinths everywhere. In vases, dried out and hung up, framed and pinned--dude was obsessed with them," Tucker went on like Sam hadn't spoken, head tipped as he studied the screen in front of him. "I think those are purple. Maybe black. I can't really tell, but they definitely aren't yellow."

Sam drew back, eyes wide. "They changed, then? Well, that's...that's good, isn't it?" When Danny and Tucker shot her twin looks of confusion, she rolled her eyes. "It means he's not in love with your mom anymore, dingus. Either that or his feelings for her changed so drastically that his hyacinths changed colors."

Danny looked contemplative for a moment, eyebrows climbing higher the longer he thought on it. "He hasn't been around my mom long enough for his feelings to suddenly change towards her. Not recently, anyway, and I'm pretty sure you have to be around them a lot for it to count, right? So it's not that."

Tucker spun to look at him with wide eyes. "Which means..."

"He's not in love with mom anymore," Danny marvelled, a bit stunned. "Vlad fell in love with someone else."

"Why would he be pissed about that, though?" When Tucker and Danny gave her befuddled looks, Sam flourished a hand at the screen. "No, seriously! Vlad could have practically anyone else he wanted, so why would he trash his office over the prospect of finally getting what he's always said he wanted?"

"I dunno, Sam, if I spent years obsessing over someone and slowly dying for them, and then suddenly developed feelings for someone else, I'd be pretty off kilter too," Tucker said dubiously.

Danny tapped his chin, brow furrowed in thought. "Unless it's not about that." He shook his head and pointed at the screen. "Think about it! Vlad may be able to woo anyone he wants--except he can't. He couldn't seduce my mom to his side with his money, or his fame, or-or _whatever_ else; he deliberately chose someone that didn't care about his money before he even had any, and it left him with Hanahaki for years! So, what if he's followed that pattern? What if the person he's fallen in love with now is going to be even harder to win over than my mom? What if _that's_ why he's angry?"

Sam's eyes widened in realization. "He knows he's hopeless."

Wincing at the implications, Tucker sucked in a breath through his teeth. "I mean, I know we hate him, but that sucks. Like, _really_ sucks. I could see trashing an office over that. Hell, I'm kinda surprised he didn't do even more damage if that's the case. I would have."

Letting out a frustrated noise, Danny frowned and began to pace. "But who is it, is the question. Who is Plasmius in love with?"

"That's it!" Tucker blurted, lunging forward and sending his fingers flying across his keyboard. 

"What's it?" Danny asked, bewildered.

Tucker jabbed a finger blindly at him over his shoulder. "That's what we do." He took his hand back to click his mouse, the zoomed in picture of petals in Vlad's hands clearing abruptly. "We find out who Plasmius is in love with--and then we hook them up!"

Incredulous, Danny raised an eyebrow. "Say what now? You want to play matchmaker? For Vlad?"

"I'm kind of with Tuck on this one, Danny," Sam began hesitantly. "I know Vlad is a jackass, but I can't help but feel... _bad_ for him. Plus, if we help him find a new sweetheart, then that gets him off your back completely! If he's not in love with your mom anymore, that means that he's not gonna be gunning for your dad either, right? So I say we help him," Sam declared with a firm nod. 

Danny hesitated. On one hand, Vlad was a bad person, and it wasn't like his loneliness wasn't as much his fault as it was others'. But...

Pressing a hand to his chest, right over where that sick feeling normally started up, Danny swallowed. If he helped Vlad now, helped him find the love that he'd always claimed to seek--would that put a stop to their fighting? Once and for all? Would he finally be able to look Vlad in the eyes and stop calling him an enemy? To be able to start calling him something of a _friend_?

Shaking his head, Danny huffed. Okay, friend was a little much. But it would definitely be nice to have some footing when he finally came at Plasmius with his truce speech. Something to soften him up a bit, make him more receptive to the idea of burying the hatchet.

Looking back up to his friends, Danny nodded. "Let's do it."

**Author's Note:**

> *yells into the Danny Phandom Void* AZRAEL???? ARE YOU DEEEEAD????


End file.
